I am having a quite odd case with WP today, and after spending about an hour searching on google and forums, can't find any answers. I hope posting here might allow me some chance to get help from WordPress Wizards that lurks somewhere on this support forum :)

Anyway, my problem here is that I accidentally deleted page.php on my template (I am trying to remove all default template and make WordPress more personalized and customizing backend). I wanted to remove the template called 'Default Template' and make the template dropdown on pages shows like:

One Page Template (or just a random name)

Grid 2 sidebar Template (or just a random name)

Store contents (or just a random name)

After I deleted page.php -- the Default Template didn't removed at all, I still got it, and I got no way to style or remove it. Adding to the problem is when I recopied page.php from my repository, I got DOUBLE template called 'Default Template' now!

I tried to replicate the problem by installing a fresh copy of WP 3.1.2 and duplicate 2010, and then I activate that duplicate. Here's my steps:

Delete page.php and page-with-sidebar.php

Check pages, now I got 'Default Template', but no page.php

Recopied page.php

Check pages, now I got TWO 'Default Template'

Switched to the original 2010 -- check pages -- works OK, with one 'Default Template' and one 'Default Template with Sidebar'

Now, what I see here is that this problem definitely happens because I deleted page.php -- and it's stuck on the Theme, not on the wordpress installation itself. To make the matter worse, I can't find any file that is updated because of it -- really amusing.

Thank you for your answer, unfortunately I'm using 2010 (aka twenty-ten), which is the default WP3.0 template. What I do is deleting page.php and page-no-sidebar.php which both are the original page template, and then recopied page.php back -- voila, got two default template, and can't change the top one at all. Anyone can test the steps above might see the same duplicates on any wordpress template -- pretty amusing stuff. Andre
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user6010Jun 8 '11 at 6:43

I just checked how this template selector works and it seems that inside wp-admin/includes/meta-boxes.php line number 588, Default template option is hard coded. You can't remove that option unless you edit this file itself.

I second the answer from 'mattsay' (hurray, btw!!) - if you open admin/includes/meta-boxes.php you can move the line

<option value='default'><?php _e('Default Template'); ?></option>

to UNDER

<?php page_template_dropdown($template); ?>

- instead of above, which moves it to the end of the select list and, thus, not the default. For me, this means that 'showcase' was now first... so i changed the title on the 'sidebar-page.php' code in the themes' folder to a name that started with a letter that would come before 'showcase' (ie. 'Default'), and POOF the sidebar template is now the default template when you go to add a new page.

side note: this only changes the add/edit template list, to change the one on 'quick edit' on the page list you need to also make the same changes (move the default option to the bottom) on admin/includes/class-wp-posts-list-table.php as well.

i also changed the option to say 'Wide Template' instead of 'Default Template' which is easier for my clients to understand.